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Notes -
This doesn't seem true, but I would expand the category of "teacher" to include writers and people who make instructional videos.
To take a very simple example, the other day we had to change a flat tire. We went onto Youtube, and several people had uploaded videos about the basic process, and various ways to get stuck tires off when changing them. This was much better than just trying to guess, based on physical reality and the tools found in the back of the car. The video makers were teaching.
Children who grow up with books around, but never have phonics explained to them generally do not learn to read English very well. Most children need someone to teach them how phonics work, even if it's just the person reading a script to the kid about how it works (and then it's a collaboration between person reading and curriculum writer).
Nobody taught me algebra in high school, because I was homeschooled and my parents just gave me a textbook, but not really one that was meant to teach an average teen all by itself. It kind of just said "here's how you manipulate these symbols correctly, here are some examples, here are some practice problems where you can manipulate the symbols yourself," without much hand holding about why anyone would want to manipulate the symbols correctly, or what they meant. I did not learn much algebra. Later, I listened to a teacher lecture, watched Khan Academy videos, and did practice problems with instant feedback. All these things were teaching (but the textbook alone didn't have enough communication channels or interactivity for me to succeed at learning from it). If someone who actually was good at explaining math had tutored me, it would probably have gone even better.
I agree that the idea of a brilliant Teacher who guides and shapes young minds, and also teaches them way more than they would learn from the standard model of lecture+demonstrations+practice+feedback is mostly a myth. I've known people I would consider elders -- very wise and I learned a lot from them in their area of interest, but it probably didn't and couldn't make a big difference in standardized tests or my ability to find and perform work.
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